Here are South Africa’s matric results for 2019

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has published the matric results for the 2019 cohort with the group achieving a pass rate of 81.3%.

A total of 787,717 candidates entered for the November 2019 NSC examination. This number was made up of 616,754 full time and 170,963 part-time candidates.

A total of 790,405 candidates sat for 147 question papers in 7,416 examination centres nationwide. A further 212 learners wrote at correctional facilities.

“We’ve got a very big system. We have more than 12 million learners in more than 26,000 schools. What is gratifying is that South African parents, rich and poor, continue to have confidence in the public school system because of your performance,” said basic education minister, Angie Motshekga.

This was the sixth cohort of candidates to write the NSC examination that is aligned to the national Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), a curriculum which is benchmarked against international standards.

Motshekga said that the overall candidate performance in the November 2019 NSC has improved significantly compared to the previous years.

The class of 2019 registered an overall pass percentage of 81.3%, which is an improvement of 3.1% to the performance of the November 2018 cohort and is the highest pass percentage recorded in the last 25 years.

The minister said that 186,058 matric students achieved a bachelor’s pass and 144,762 achieved a diploma pass.

A further 78,984 achieved a higher certificate pass.

The graph below represents the past percentage in the last 12 years.

Subject performance

The DBE said that there was a drop in the number of candidates passing mathematics in the November 2019 NSC examination compared to 2018.

However, it noted that the learners attaining admission to bachelor studies and passing physical sciences as per the indicators outlined in the National Development Plan is on an ‘upward trajectory’.

The table below indicates the performance of full-time candidates attaining 30% and above in the 11 “gateway subjects”.

Improvement in the number of learners qualifying for admission to bachelor studies from 172,043 to 186,058 (3.3% improvement).

Improvement in the number of learners qualifying for admission to diploma studies from 141,700 to 144,672 (1.1% improvement).

The number of quintile 1 to 3 schools performing at an overall pass percentage of 80% and above increased from 1 961 in 2018 to 2 484 in 2019. This represents 50% of the total number of quintile 1, 2 and 3 schools countrywide.

Improvement in the overall pass percentages of 8 of the 9 provinces.

96,976 of the admission to bachelors studies come from quintiles 1, 2 and 3 as compared to 78 037 that are coming from quintiles 4 and 5.

All the 75 districts are performing at 60% and above with 45 of the districts (compared to 34 in 2018) performing at 80% and above.